We need a new jail on Oahu, but it should be smaller and smarter than one the state wants to build.

The jail the state is planning to build in Halawa Valley will cost over half a billion dollars. It will have a modern look and utilize the latest technology to control over a thousand inmates, but despite the modern appearance and technology, it will do exactly what jails have always done — promote criminality and serve as the gateway to prison for the poor, homeless, addicted and mentally ill.

We can do better than that. We can build a jail that is smaller and smarter, and will reduce recidivism and make our community safer.

The first step toward a smaller and smarter jail is to engage the community in the planning process. The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” The same can be said for entering its jails.

Stakeholders and the government should share responsibility for creating a jail that reflects our values, and is safe, secure and humane.

The first question we should ask is not “How big does the jail have to be?” but “How small can we make it?”

There are many proven ways to reduce the jail population, and they should be our first priority. We should focus on diverting low-level offenders away from the criminal justice system and into community-based care, eliminating cash bail for individuals who can be safely supervised in the community while awaiting trial, issuing citations to low-level offenders instead of putting them in jail, and providing treatment options to probation violators instead of locking them up. If we focused on these few but important policy changes we could build a jail that is half the size and cost of the one the state is planning to build.

The most important decision in planning a jail is deciding its role. Jails have traditionally been a place to hold dangerous criminals who are awaiting trial and misdemeanants who are serving sentences of a year or less. But times have changed and so has our jail population.

Oahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC) is filled with poor, homeless, low-level offenders, many of whom suffer from mental illness and substance abuse disorders These people live on the street and endlessly cycle through our jails and emergency rooms, costing the state millions, without ever getting the help they need.

We can change that by redefining the role of the jail. At intake, jails should assess the physical, mental and social needs of inmates — and address those needs in a comprehensive manner.

Inmates should receive humane and therapeutic treatment while they are in jail, and when they are released it should be with a discharge plan that helps them access the services they need.

Inmates who are unable to access services on their own should have the assistance of a “navigator” to help and support them as the reenter the community.

The House Concurrent Resolution 85 Task Force on Prison Reform recommended that the state “stop the costly planning for a huge new jail and form a collaborative working group of stakeholders and government officials to plan and design a jail that is smaller, smarter, and less expensive than the one now under consideration.”

The state should follow the Task Force’s recommendation. If we don’t change course quickly, we will end up with a half-billion-dollar jail that will produce bad outcomes for the rest of this century — and will be obsolete the moment it opens because it is based on outmoded ideas and a failed planning process.

Robert Merce is a retired lawyer and recently served as vice chairman of the House Concurrent Resolution 85 Task Force on Prison Reform; the views expressed here are his own.